So, they played three monkeys and said, “la la la, I can’t see it. la la la” (not an exact quote) But, that’s not where the absurdity ends. The EPA could have sent a printed copy and that would have been the end of it.

Nope.

Instead they rewrote the conclusions to make more palatable for the dunking bird-set. Email has always been a best effort tool that has morphed into business critical function over the years. But, to say they wouldn’t open an email…wow. Remember folks, if you are a Republican or Democrat be sure to VOTE. You have a responsibility.

From NY Times:

Over the past five days, the officials said, the White House successfully put pressure on the E.P.A. to eliminate large sections of the original analysis that supported regulation, including a finding that tough regulation of motor vehicle emissions could produce $500 billion to $2 trillion in economic benefits over the next 32 years. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.

Both documents, as prepared by the E.P.A., “showed that the Clean Air Act can work for certain sectors of the economy, to reduce greenhouse gases,” one of the senior E.P.A. officials said. “That’s not what the administration wants to show. They want to show that the Clean Air Act can’t work.”

November can’t come soon enough.

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After hearing his speech, I thought about how Eric and Google are impacting the digital revolution after so many others have tried unsuccessfully over the last 25 years. He has led the company through a period of explosive growth from $1 Billion to over $16 Billion in the past year, while keeping the young, fun, irreverent culture intact. Considering the meteoric rise of Google’s popularity in a reasonably short period of time, to the point that the company name is now actually a verb!

The point that I found enlightening was his summary, which you can scroll to at the 26 - 30 minutes timeframe in the presentation, where he shared an interesting glimpse into the culture of Google. “Creating more luck, giving yourself more at bats, being out there… to think big and inspire a culture of YES.” The culture of Yes inspires people to aim higher and be ambitious in their reach and goals.

That is a very interesting point in which I really believe. If there is one thing that all companies and especially small companies struggle with because of natural resource constraints, it is building a strong culture of Yes. We have tried to do this from the very inception of ScienceLogic, but it continues to get harder and harder the larger the business grows. To consistently inspire a principle of Yes, without agreeing to every idea that flows across my desk is amongst the most challenging parts of our daily jobs. However if I could create the perfect scenario, we would intuitively strive for a principle of Yes and inspire our associates and our ecosystem of partners and customers to use this simple concept to confidently go forward.

Eric says, “It is possible to build a culture around innovation. It is possible to build a culture around leadership, and it is possible to build a culture around optimism.” Google is a great example, but by no means the only example. I agree with Eric’s summary and hope to lead ScienceLogic according to these very basic but essential principles. “Let’s be revolutionaries. Let’s take this opportunity, this huge change that is before us with technology and let’s change our businesses, our communication and the way we interact on some new principles that reflect the very best in America.”

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Sevcik and Wetzel have a consistently interesting column on Application Performance Management at NetworkWorld. This week, they unveiled the results of a benchmarking survey that tells them mid-sized enterprises have it harder when it comes to deploying such solutions.

We agree; it’s why we exist. Mid-sized enterprises have the same IT problems but not nearly the same amount of resources as the really big guys to throw against solving them.

VMWare’s acquisition of B-hive continues to generate buzz for performance management and virtualization. I love this quote from the CEO of Aternity, “The next big frontier is the ability to transform huge amounts of data into actionable business intelligence that correlates across platforms.” Um, we’re already doing this. What would be the purpose of collecting hundreds of millions of data points if you couldn’t actually present the data in a meaningful way? Maybe his comment was taken out of context and it’s more about the fact that it’s often difficult to get consistent and accurate info on virtualization resource utilization stats in particular. That we totally agree with. Another take on the B-hive acquisition: VMTN blog gives a quick overview of what it means for infrastructure groups and virtual environments.

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Apollo Robbins won't say whether he's ever stolen anything in his life, but it's clear he could if he wanted to. Having grown up in Missouri with three half-brothers who were all involved in various criminal activities (one of them is in the witness protection program after testifying against former colleagues of his), the 34-year-old Robbins was indoctrinated at an early age into the finer aspects of pickpocketing and con games.

He eventually developed those skills into a successful career as a sleight-of-hand artist and performer in Las Vegas. His latest act, though, has him starring as a corporate security consultant. In this role, it is less his dexterous hands that appeals to his clients than his mastery of all aspects of criminal cons, grifts, and social-engineering ploys.

"When you're trying to steal something, you find the weakest link and work that," Robbins says. "Nowadays, as technology gets better and security systems get harder to break through, the weakest link in any system is the human running it."

Robbins founded his consulting operation, Whizmob Inc. (the name comes from the street term for a team of pickpockets working together), two years ago while still performing full-time.

After doing a show a few years back in which he pickpocketed Secret Service agents accompanying former president Jimmy Carter, the resulting publicity led several law-enforcement agencies and other groups to contact him about his techniques.

"At first, I'd refer them to security people I knew," says Robbins. "Then I realized that instead of being a referral service, I could capitalize on this."

It was a good time to get in on the act. Information security consulting, which barely existed in the mid '90s, has become an estimated $10 billion to $12 billion business as the need to protect sensitive information stored on computers and servers has become a more central concern.

Today, Robbins counts the N.F.L., TNT, and several Fortune 500 companies among his customers. He recently advised the N.F.L. on information security protection at this year's Super Bowl in Phoenix to combat the expected flow of thieves and con artists lured by all the deep-pocketed spectators coming to town.

His work included getting a major hotel to upgrade its WiFi security so that fake access programs known as Trojans couldn't extract valuable data and password information from unsuspecting guests' computers. And at the stadium where the game was held, Robbins and his team identified areas where pickpockets would most likely operate—specifically, places with lots of traffic where bumping into people would be customary, and easy access to exits for escape purposes.

Besides the shadier elements of Robbins' childhood, his father, a blind minister, instilled in him a strong sense of morality. "It was like living in two worlds," Robbins says.

In many ways, he still is living in two worlds, since he keeps in regular contact with some professional thieves he knows in order to stay abreast of the latest cons. (While he doesn't pay them, Robbins says that "a lot of these guys are really good at what they do but they can't exactly discuss it with a lot of people.") But increasingly, Robbins is spending time in the more staid settings of the corporations that hire him to vet their security systems.

"It's a good time to be in the business," he says.

From APCMAG:

Broadband modem/router maker Billion says XP SP3 has been causing its BiPAC 5200-series routers to go into a constant crash and reboot cycle.

The company has produced firmware upgrades that solve the problem.

Although Windows XP SP3 has been available for manual download from Microsoft since May 6, it has just hit Windows Update as an automatic upgrade, which will cause unexpected problems for owners of “unpatched” Billion BiPAC 5200 routers, and possibly other brands or models of router.

The affected BiPAC 5200 firmware versions are 2.9.8.x and 2.11.0.x~2.11.33.x.

Reminds me of the problem that Vista caused on wireless networks when it first came out.

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Since 9/11, there has been an increasing war on photography. Photographers have been harrassed, questioned, detained, arrested or worse, and declared to be unwelcome. We've been repeatedly told to watch out for photographers, especially suspicious ones. Clearly any terrorist is going to first photograph his target, so vigilance is required.

Except that it's nonsense. The 9/11 terrorists didn't photograph anything. Nor did the London transport bombers, the Madrid subway bombers, or the liquid bombers arrested in 2006. Timothy McVeigh didn't photograph the Oklahoma City Federal Building. The Unabomber didn't photograph anything; neither did shoe-bomber Richard Reid. Photographs aren't being found amongst the papers of Palestinian suicide bombers. The IRA wasn't known for its photography. Even those manufactured terrorist plots that the US government likes to talk about -- the Ft. Dix terrorists, the JFK airport bombers, the Miami 7, the Lackawanna 6 -- no photography.

Given that real terrorists, and even wannabe terrorists, don't seem to photograph anything, why is it such pervasive conventional wisdom that terrorists photograph their targets? Why are our fears so great that we have no choice but to be suspicious of any photographer?

Because it's a movie-plot threat.

A movie-plot threat is a specific threat, vivid in our minds like the plot of a movie. You remember them from the months after the 9/11 attacks: anthrax spread from crop dusters, a contaminated milk supply, terrorist scuba divers armed with almanacs. Our imaginations run wild with detailed and specific threats, from the news, and from actual movies and television shows. These movie plots resonate in our minds and in the minds of others we talk to. And many of us get scared.

Terrorists taking pictures is a quintessential detail in any good movie. Of course it makes sense that terrorists will take pictures of their targets. They have to do reconnaissance, don't they? We need 45 minutes of television action before the actual terrorist attack -- 90 minutes if it's a movie -- and a photography scene is just perfect. It's our movie-plot terrorists that are photographers, even if the real-world ones are not.

The problem with movie-plot security is it only works if we guess the plot correctly. If we spend a zillion dollars defending Wimbledon and terrorists blow up a different sporting event, that's money wasted. If we post guards all over the Underground and terrorists bomb a crowded shopping area, that's also a waste. If we teach everyone to be alert for photographers, and terrorists don't take photographs, we've wasted money and effort, and taught people to fear something they shouldn't.

And even if terrorists did photograph their targets, the math doesn't make sense. Billions of photographs are taken by honest people every year, 50 billion by amateurs alone in the US And the national monuments you imagine terrorists taking photographs of are the same ones tourists like to take pictures of. If you see someone taking one of those photographs, the odds are infinitesimal that he's a terrorist.

Of course, it's far easier to explain the problem than it is to fix it. Because we're a species of storytellers, we find movie-plot threats uniquely compelling. A single vivid scenario will do more to convince people that photographers might be terrorists than all the data I can muster to demonstrate that they're not.

Fear aside, there aren't many legal restrictions on what you can photograph from a public place that's already in public view. If you're harassed, it's almost certainly a law enforcement official, public or private, acting way beyond his authority. There's nothing in any post-9/11 law that restricts your right to photograph.

This is worth fighting. Search "photographer rights" on Google and download one of the several wallet documents that can help you if you get harassed; I found one for the UK, US, and Australia. Don't cede your right to photograph in public. Don't propagate the terrorist photographer story. Remind them that prohibiting photography was something we used to ridicule about the USSR. Eventually sanity will be restored, but it may take a while.

This essay originally appeared in The Guardian.